Kurt Tucholsky, a Berliner against the catastrophe

Kurt Tucholsky was born in 1890 in Berlin. After studying law in Berlin, Jena and Geneva, he became an associate of the Weltbühne. He joined the social democratic SPD before being mobilized for the First World War. In 1924 he became press correspondent in Paris. Like Heinrich Heine in the nineteenth century, he tried to promote an understanding between Germans and French. Tucholsky was the most influential literary critic of his time. 

He wrote under pseudonyms:  Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. 

He was deprived of his German nationality in 1933. He fled to Sweden. Not being able to get political asylum, he took his life in 1935, near Gothenburg. What reminds of the tragic destiny of Walter Benjamin, another berliner.

Another brilliant author, Erich Kästner, called Tucholsky "a small, fat Berliner, who wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter". 

He is still widely published and read in Germany. 

A fragment by Kurt Tucholsky, from 1931:

If someone borrows a book from the library, let’s say by Marx: whom is it he wants to read? He wants to read Marx! Whom does he most certainly not want to read? Herr Posauke. What has Herr Posauke done? Herr Posauke has scribbled all over the book.

Whether one should scribble all over one’s own books is a different question (cf. On Scribbling in Books, Book Margins and Book-Related Artifacts, inaugural dissertation of Dr. Peter Panter, presented to the University of Saarow-Pieskow, dedicated to my dear parents.) You can do what you like with your own books, but how should you treat those of others? The Prussian State Library, to which one should grant the equivalent of the costs of a medium-sized infantry division, to enable it to become a modern library, should defend itself vigorously against those with the bad habit of ranting all over borrowed books, and that’s the only way of putting it.

„Oh, ho!“ „Completely wrong, see Volkmar, p. 564.“ „Idiot!“ „Bravo!“ „No, N. did not reject this theory at all!” “Ignorant !“

What is this all about? First of all, it is cowardly to attack the author: he is not there, and cannot defend himself. Secondly, it puts the next reader completely off his reading: one doesn’t feel like starting at the top left-hand side if something that one doesn’t know is underlined at the bottom right-hand side. The eye becomes nervous, and looks away. /…/ It is like leaving your picnic rubbish in the woods.

From "Panter, Tiger & Co.: Eine neue Auswahl aus seinen Schriften und Gedichten"